science

Tag archives for science

A slight science journalism FAIL in a story at iO9, originally from the New Scientist: the Title: “First Quantum Effects Seen in Visible Object” the Lede: “Does Schrödinger’s cat really exist? You bet. The first ever quantum superposition in an object visible to the naked eye has been observed.” the Discovery: “[researchers showed] that a…

I’m here in DC at the Newseum for the State of Innovation Summit, a collaboration between SEED and the Council on Competitiveness. The crowd is pretty awesome – right now Adam Bly, SEED’s CEO, is sitting a few rows from me with E.O. Wilson. Earlier, Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, talked about a…

This would be funnier if it weren’t so painfully true. Also see the sequel. I didn’t get to this for a few days because I was working too hard to blog last week. In the meantime, Language Log responded with an especially egregious example of this sort of oversimplification. Cartoon by Jorge Cham, via Sheril…

Just when I was wondering why there hasn’t been more mainstream coverage of the Jared Diamond/New Yorker lawsuit I blogged about at the beginning of this month, Columbia Journalism Review has an update. And in a recent article in Science, Diamond commented, saying “The complaint has no merit at all.” Oddly, the Science article (which…

This week, Nieman Journalism Lab is running a fascinating series of video interviews with the New York Times’ R&D group on the possible future face of news media. I know – you’re wondering why the supposedly financially moribund NYT is wasting money on nerds who play with Kindles. Who do they think they are, Google?…

I was recently reading A Scientist’s Guide to Talking With the Media, a useful and clearheaded book by Richard Hayes and Daniel Grossman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Emphasizing the importance of science outreach, Hayes and Grossman praise the pop-sci luminaries who followed in the footsteps of Carl Sagan: With his intriguing investigations into…

Christmas greeting card, school unknown, circa 1920. Dittrick Medical History Center from Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 Slate has an intriguing new review by Barron Lerner of a book called Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930, by John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson.…

We all know Twitter can be annoying, but is it really evil? During the past week, you may have heard that there is brand-new neuroscientific evidence proving exactly that. But the hype turns out to be just that: hype. It all started with a press release from USC about an upcoming PNAS paper by Mary…

C.P. Snow fans, prepare to head over to the Intersection to partake in an upcoming online discussion of Snow’s famous “Two Cultures” address. In their new article, “The Culture Crosser,” Sheril and Chris portray Snow as a sort of science policy prophet: It helps to think of Snow as an early theorist on a critical…

In her recent TED talk, JoAnne Kuchera-Morin described UCSB’s AlloSphere, a new project that enables scientists to literally stand inside a three-story projection of their data: The AlloSphere space consists of a 3-story cube that is treated with extensive sound absorption material making it one of the largest anechoic chambers in the world. Standing inside…